Can popular music achieve genuine political change?

Although popular music can influence people’s political beliefs, I don’t think it can achieve genuine political change. The content of songs can cause people to become aware of certain political issues, but it is more likely to make a social rather than political difference. John Street said, “music has symbolic force, it deploys the power of language to create visions, articulate ideas and to form bonds”. This shows that the nature of music exercises influence over people’s ideas, but it is only able to influence their ideas as opposed to creating real political action. It is up to the people to put the ideas into action, which mostly occurs on a more social than political scale. For example, donating to charity because of Band-Aid shows music making a change, but it is a social change rather than political. Popular music gives light to political issues to create social change.